


falling and I don't know what to say

by liadan14



Series: lover with a radar phone [7]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 80s pop music, M/M, Multi, POV Will Byers, Thanksgiving, Unprotected Sex (referenced), mentions of aids, outsider pov, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: They drive up to Chicago for Thanksgiving in Dustin’s car. It used to be Steve’s car, but he really doesn’t need it in Chicago, so he sold it to Dustin for probably way less than it’s worth. It’s the first time any of them have had a major holiday without parental supervision.Will’s mostly just really glad Jonathan and Nancy decided to wait until Thursday morning to drive over from New York, because he needs to talk to Billy alone.AKA, the one where Billy accidentally tells everyone Steve was his first.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Will Byers/Original Male Character(s)
Series: lover with a radar phone [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571581
Comments: 21
Kudos: 327





	falling and I don't know what to say

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This fic references Will, a minor (he's 17 in this), having unprotected oral sex. It's also set during the AIDS crisis, and I took that context and also the lack of knowledge about it I imagined to exist in rural Indiana pretty seriously in this fic. Also adults giving underage people beer.

It all starts a week before Thanksgiving. 

Well, alright, if Will’s being honest, it starts with the start of his senior year of high school. Jennifer Hayes’ brother comes back after the summer with his hair just a bit longer than it was before, and Will had kind of thought he was cute for a sophomore last year, but this year he spends a good portion of Calculus I just kind of staring at the back of his neck and wondering how you ask out another guy in a place like Hawkins.

He even tried asking Billy, but Billy was no help. 

“I dunno, squirt,” he’d said on the phone, even though Will is almost taller than him now. “I never really got around to asking Steve out, things just kinda happened.”

“What about before Steve?” Will whined, aware he was whining and unable to help it. 

He could pretty much hear Billy’s shrug down the phone line. “Before Steve, I wasn’t in Hawkins.”

It had raised a whole bunch of question marks about the way Nancy and Jonathan still seem to view Billy as some sort of unquestioned sex god, and the way Billy only has to walk into a room to have everyone’s eyes on him, but Will didn’t dare ask more.

“Look,” Billy told him, “if you think he won’t be a dick about it, just ask him in private. If you think he will be dick, he’s not worth your time.”

Thus began Will’s epic quest to get Jimmy Hayes alone.

In retrospect, maybe it was kind of obvious of him, to use the men’s room at the same time as Jimmy every lunch break, to linger in the changing rooms after gym if Jimmy was still showering, but Jimmy always smiled at him, always asked him _what’s up_ like it really mattered, and Will was still pretty shy. 

When Jimmy asks him, towards the middle of September, if he wants to meet up under the bleachers during lunch, Will blushes basically all over, but he still says yes. It might be his only chance to actually work up the courage to ask Jimmy out.

Only, he never gets around to that part. Instead, he spends the next week or two making out with Jimmy every chance they get, during lunch and free periods and AV Club.

He’s not really sure if they’re dating, or if he even wants to be dating Jimmy. Jimmy’s nice, and Will likes how he looks, but he doesn’t really ever want to talk to Will, or just hang out or anything. It takes Will until October to tentatively start the conversation, and he’s nothing but relieved when Jimmy tells him that he’d rather just be friends who hook up than anything more. When Will agrees wholeheartedly, Jimmy’s thrilled.

This is about when he starts inviting Will to come along to college parties in Bloomington.

It’s an hour and half to get there, but there’s actually decent beer, unlike at Hawkins High parties, where Will has only ever seen Bud Lite. There’s also much better weed, and a lot more queer guys. He, Jennifer and Jimmy trade off who drives them there and who has to stop drinking at midnight to be sober enough to drive home by two AM. Sometimes, he and Jimmy end up in someone else’s bedroom, buzzed and with their hands all over each other; sometimes they end up with other people, and sometimes Will and Jennifer get high as kites together and talk about her massive secret crush on Dustin. They always make it back to Hawkins before four. 

Will has never felt this normal in his life.

He really only starts freaking out about it when, three days before Thanksgiving, his mom punches the radio off when a serious newscaster starts interviewing some idiot calling the AIDS crisis God’s punishment for the sin of homosexuality.

“I can’t believe they’re still putting crap like that on the air,” she mutters. “You hungry, sweetie?”

“No,” Will chokes out, unable to forget that he gave his first ever blow job last week and didn’t use protection.

So. That’s how it all starts.

-

They drive up to Chicago for Thanksgiving in Dustin’s car. It used to be Steve’s car, but he really doesn’t need it in Chicago, so he sold it to Dustin for probably way less than it’s worth. It’s the first time any of them have had a major holiday without parental supervision, and El is incredibly jealous, but Hopper still won’t let her out of his sight. In a fit of unprecedented kindness, Mike is staying back in Hawkins, too, to celebrate the holiday with her. In a way, Will’s kind of glad, because then his mom will have some kids to fuss over. She had tears in her eyes when she waved them off. 

Will’s mostly just really glad she’s not going to be there, because he needs to talk to Billy alone and Jonathan and Nancy decided to wait until Thursday morning to drive over from New York, as if traffic will be any better then.

They take turns driving, and Will’s kind of glad he’s last. He’s also kind of glad he’s zoned out enough to not really care about what’s going on when Max starts driving, because she’s _insane_. Lucas is still telling her she’s a crazy person by the time he takes the wheel, but they’re only a half-hour outside of Chicago by then because it turns out speeding like a maniac gets you places faster.

“Hey, Will, you in there?” Lucas asks mildly.

“Huh?”

“I just said, on the way back you’re taking the first half because you won’t _kill us_.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Will doesn’t mind my driving, right?” Max asks, poking Will in the shoulder from the seat behind his.

“Um,” Will says.

“See?”

Max and Lucas are off again, bickering.

Dustin leans forward. “You okay?” he hisses in Will’s ear, as if it wasn’t totally audible to everyone in the stupid car.

“Fine,” Will says. “Just tired.”

“Probably all those _college parties_ ,” Dustin says, because Dustin is still annoyed that Will would rather drink decent beer than watch Dustin reassert his title as reigning Hawkins keg stand champion every weekend. Will just thinks it’s unfair, because Dustin doesn’t have much of a gag reflex and no one else on the baseball team with him seems to know this.

Will closes his eyes.

They get to Steve and Billy’s apartment a little after seven. It’s a new place, a little bigger than the last one, which is good, because all four of them need a place to sleep and none of them can afford a hotel.

Billy opens the door for them, yelling halfway down the stairs at them to take their shoes off, please. Max gets this little grin she always does when Billy acts like an adult, which Will thinks is kind of funny but also kind of sad, because as far as he’s concerned, Billy’s the coolest adult he knows.

Max’s expression only intensifies when they get to the apartment and the peppy synth track booming through the whole place becomes audible.

“What the fuck, man?” She hisses to Billy. 

“It’s self-defense, trust me,” Billy hisses back, as Steve’s voice singing off-key with Laura Branigan floats over from the kitchen.

 _And you really don’t remember, is it something that he said_ becomes twice as loud as Dustin storms the kitchen to say hello. Will pauses in the hallway, overwhelmed. Max and Billy are still sizing each other up, both pretending they don’t really need a hug, and Lucas has ambled after Dustin slowly. There are about four conversations going at the same time, and Laura’s yelling, _why isn’t anybody caaaaalling?_

“Doin’ okay there, baby Byers?” Billy asks him, that stupid fucking shit-eating grin all over his face. 

“He’s been like this all day,” Max says dismissively. “Why’s your boyfriend locked up in the kitchen?”

“I dunno, ask _your_ boyfriend, dipshit,” Billy tells her, and she goes to do just that.

“Can I talk to you?” Will says immediately, literally the second she vanishes. He’s not very good at playing it cool.

It sort of spills out of him, fast and sloppy, standing in the freezing cold on the fire escape, everything about Jimmy, and the parties in Bloomington, and he ends by saying, “And now I think I need to get tested.” 

Billy says nothing for a long moment.

Then, “Jesus.”

He runs a hand through his hair. It looks rumpled, anyway, no product in it, which Will has never seen before. It makes him look a lot softer than he used to.

“Okay,” Billy says. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna get up super early tomorrow, we’re gonna go to Robin’s and we’re gonna hope that her friend at the clinic will see you without you giving your mom’s insurance information. Yeah?”

Will hadn’t even considered insurance.

“Yeah,” he says miserably.

“Christ,” Billy says. “You’re supposed to be smart, kid.”

“I know.”

Will considers that he probably should have asked Robin in the first place, because she’s pretty open about these things, but it never even occurred to him. Billy was the first one of them to ever come out to Will, to let him know on no uncertain terms that Will could talk to him about this stuff, that it was going to be okay. It sure doesn’t feel like that, now.

“We’ll figure it out,” Billy says.

Will hopes he’s right.

It’s ridiculously hot in the apartment. Steve’s roasting potatoes and chicken nuggets in the oven for dinner, and it looks like there’s food on every available surface.

“Gotta get the sides ready for tomorrow,” he says, when he sees Will’s shell-shocked expression at the state of the kitchen. “The oven’s too small to fit more than the turkey. How’s it going, Will?”

“Yeah,” Will says, like an idiot. “Good.”

Steve grins at him and ruffles his hair, making Will feel a bit like he’s still twelve and traumatized.

“C’mon,” Steve says. “Lighten up. It’s the holidays!”

“You see what I put up with?” Billy grumbles, gently grabbing Will by the shoulders and moving him to the side so he can get the plates out from the cabinet. In the living room, Dustin and Lucas are already arguing about who gets to sleep on the pull-out couch.

Steve flips the bird at them both, turns back to stirring whatever’s in the big pot, singing, _you know that I’m falling and I don’t know what to say_ along with Stevie Nicks.

The instant Steve’s back is turned, Billy’s whole face goes so indescribably fond Will thinks he’s going to die on the spot with how badly he wishes someone would just look at him that way.

-

Robin is pissed off that they chase her out of bed at eight AM on a holiday.

“I swear to god, Hargrove,” she hisses, pulling them into her dorm room before her alleged Nazi of an RA catches sight of them. “If this is about the pie, I’ve got it covered and I’ve also talked to Steve about it, like, eight times this week.”

“It’s not about the pie,” Billy says.

“I thought Nancy and Jonathan were doing desserts,” Will says, not because he really cares, but because he remembers a really intense conference call a few weeks ago when the Thanksgiving menu was nailed down and Steve had said a few very mom-like things that ended up meaning no one had to bring any food for Thanksgiving except Nancy, who would not budge.

Billy and Robin exchange a look. 

“I’m doing back-up desserts,” Robin says, as if that’s even a thing. “Now why are you two here at ass o’clock in the morning?”

Will subsides.

Billy explains it in brief terms, and Robin turns to him with something like fury on her face. 

“What were you _thinking_?” She hisses. “You _know_ what’s going on out there, Will. There’s people dying in the streets, you _use – fucking – protection_!”

Her friend at the clinic is equally pissed off, and not exactly thrilled to be treating a minor. She gives Robin the most long-suffering look Will has seen since last night, when Steve watched them play Risk on his and Billy’s living room floor and Max and Lucas almost came to blows. But she promises to send the results to Robin, and not to Will’s home address in Hawkins.

Will – dissociates. At least, he thinks he does. He nods and does what Robin’s friend tells him, takes off his pants and lets her look at stuff, agrees when she tells him to never do it again, nods when she says she’ll send the results on when they’re ready and Robin will call him.

He nods some more when Billy asks if he’s okay.

He’s not, really. 

He used to feel like this all the time, like he was just floating around a foot above the place where his body ends, like he was never really awake. 

It ended eventually, when things got better, when he got through a night or two with no nightmares. He misses it, sometimes, actually. Usually during algebra tests; they were a lot easier when he felt like he was barely in control of his own body and not actively panicking.

It’s only way, way later that he realizes he’s missing a really important piece of information.

-

Over the course of the day, it has become pretty clear that Steve has taken the whole “hosting Thanksgiving” thing very seriously. Not only has he put Robin in charge of back-up desserts, he was in the kitchen pretty much all day. Billy took Max, Lucas, Dustin and Will downtown as soon as everyone was up and ready, leaving Robin with Steve to deal with the turkey, and by the time they get back, the tape Steve has apparently been listening to on loop for the last few days is back to _Gloria_ and Nancy and Jonathan have gotten in.

They’ve gotten the kitchen table and the living room table set up diagonally through the living room so everyone can sit, and Lucas and Max are setting out places. They’re starting to fight about the right way to set a place – something about the spoons going outside the knives. Will’s given up on listening. He loves them all, but a full day of Lucas, Dustin and Max is a loud day, even when he’s not feeling as bad as he does right now.

He wishes he didn’t feel quite so guilty and stressed about Robin’s friend and the test results, or he’d try to sneak a beer. Robin and Steve must’ve started drinking a while ago, because Steve’s a lot less high-strung than he was this morning. Will could really use a drink, or a cigarette. Right now, the only thing keeping him going is how pained Jonathan looks at the music choices blaring out on the stupid tape they’re still listening to.

“Oh my god,” Nancy whispers, watching Lucas and Max with rapt eyes. 

“What?” Jonathan asks. 

“Don’t you see it?”

Jonathan still looks pretty puzzled, but he’s never been the best at reading people.

Billy, though, leans across the table and says, “Tommy H. and Carol, circa 1985.”

Jonathan stops, briefly, stares. “Huh,” he says.

Robin snickers into her beer.

“What happened to them?” Nancy asks.

“They’re married,” Billy says. “Carol’s pregnant.”

“Oh,” Nancy says, seemingly shocked.

Billy shrugs. “We keep in touch.”

Max and Lucas’s fight reaches a crescendo – it turns out it’s actually about how Max thinks Lucas thinks she’s white trash because his family has more money than hers. It’s momentarily distracting enough that Will leans over to Robin and Billy to ask, “Hey, um, do you guys know how long it will take to get results for that test?”

Billy shrugs uncomfortably.

“Uh, yeah, like three months,” Robin says. “Billy, my man, this shit is basic.”

“Three _months_?” Will says, unable to parse living like this for three full months.

Billy, at the same time, says, “It’s not like I’ve ever gotten it done before.”

“I can’t _believe_ you!” Max is yelling.

 _Leave ‘em hanging on the li-ine, Gloria_ , the fucking tape sings. Again.

“What?” Robin hisses. “Billy, you’ve gotta be kidding me. You’re part of Act Up on campus.”

“Hey, Williams!” Dustin says. “I think you guys need to stop whispering and intervene before they kill each other.”

“I can’t do it anymore,” Jonathan says. “There has to be another tape in this apartment.”

He presses eject.

Billy says, “I’ve never been with anyone but Steve, okay?”

The music has stopped entirely. So has Lucas and Max’s fight.

“ _What_?” Steve asks, standing in the doorway, holding a casserole dish with red oven mitts.

Then, “Ow, shit,” as he puts the dish down on the table.

Then, “Um, Billy, could you come to the kitchen for a second?”

The kitchen door closes with a decisive click.

“Well,” Robin says. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

 _How could you not tell me?_ Steve’s voice is saying, distorted from the kitchen door in the way.

Billy’s response is too low to carry.

 _I would’ve made it a lot more special,_ Steve is saying, and Billy’s answer is still inaudible but vehement.

“Uh, honey, maybe get some more music on,” Nancy says, tips of her ears flushed red.

“Right,” Jonathan says, and puts in a tape by the Police. At least it’s not _Gloria_.

They sit in awkward silence for a while, and then Robin caves, gets the beer out from behind the couch and starts passing it around to everyone, even the minors.

She even gives Will a cigarette on the fire escape, ignoring Jonathan and Nancy’s dirty looks. “You’re gonna have to relax about it at some point,” she tells him. “Three months is a long time to be this tense.”

“I know,” Will says. “I’m just so…sorry. And now I’ve fucked things up for Billy too, over a stupid fucking blow job at a party.”

Robin stares at him.

“What?”

“Will, you can’t get it from oral. I mean, no one’s one hundred percent sure, but it’s probably just from penetration.”

Will’s entire body sags with relief.

“You can still get herpes,” Robin warns, “and it was still a fucking dumb thing to do and you’d better not ever do it again.”

“I know, I know, I won’t,” he says, but he’s grinning.

By the time Billy and Steve get out from the kitchen, flushed and smiling at each other when they think no one’s watching, everyone is drunk enough to ignore that the turkey got just a little bit too dry while they were hashing it out. The sweet potatoes are fucking amazing.

“Dad Steve strikes again,” Lucas says, digging in, and Steve looks so proud.

Billy looks…well, he looks indescribably fond, but he looks indescribably fond right there where Steve can see him, and Steve looks unbearably fond back.

Jonathan bumps Will’s shoulder, says, “You doing okay, Will?”

Will looks down at his plate, where Dustin has snuck over extra sweet potatoes because Will liked them so much. “Yeah,” he tells his brother. “I’m good. As long as you don’t tell mom about this.” He waves towards his drink.

Jonathan snorts. “I like being alive,” he says, and they clink their beers together.

“Oh, shit!” Max yells. “We forgot to say stuff we’re thankful for!”

Everyone groans, halfway through their plates already.

“I am thankful for this beer,” Robin says. “There, done.”

“Ditto,” Lucas says.

“Ugh, fine,” Max subsides. “Hey, Dad Steve, what’re you thankful for?”

Steve reaches over, takes Billy’s hand, raises it to his lips. 

Billy goes bright red.

Dustin pretends to gag.

It’s a pretty good Thanksgiving.

(Will never tells anyone that, later on, when they’re all spread out on the floor and the couch, digesting and drinking, he gets up to switch the tape. He almost puts the shitty pop music one with _Gloria_ back in, just to mess with Jonathan, has it in his hand, when he sees what’s written on it. It just says, _For Steve_ , but it’s in Billy’s slanted cursive. Will puts on the Ramones instead.)

**Author's Note:**

> So, the song referenced most throughout this fic is _Gloria_ by Laura Branigan which slaps but will never ever ever leave your head. The intro is lethal. The other one is _Everywhere_ by Fleetwood Mac, which is also where the title is from.
> 
> Bet you thought this was gonna be a silly light-hearted one, huh. Psych.
> 
> Next up is almost definitely going to be one from Billy's POV set pre-S3
> 
> Buuuut after that  
> a) The Thanksgiving with Steve's mom where everyone pretends there were no monsters and everything is normal  
> ooooor  
> b) How Carol and Billy became BFFs?
> 
> Also come follow me on [tumblr](https://bewires.tumblr.com/)


End file.
